


Just An Attempt (to know the worth of my life)

by consideritalljoy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief, Post Order 66, i'm dealing with a lot right now and instead of coping i'm writing this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24062830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consideritalljoy/pseuds/consideritalljoy
Summary: Alone in the wake of Order 66, Obi-Wan encounters a grief he can't simply outrun.Chapters will follow the stages of grief.
Kudos: 22





	1. Holding Pattern (step one: denial)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Rows of houses,  
>  Sound asleep.  
> Only street lights  
> Notice me.  
> I am desperate,  
> If nothing else,  
> In a holding pattern  
> To find myself.  
> -Sleeping At Last, "Mercury"_

A week into his exile, Obi-Wan was getting restless. He’d handed Luke off and found the remains of something that could perhaps be loosely considered a dwelling. He’d spent the last few days scouting the surrounding area, ensuring nothing had followed him, ensuring Luke was safe, getting his bearings. 

He’d been undercover once before, back when he’d spent some time as Rako Hardeen. In order to not be found out, he’d had to dampen his Force signature down to nothing, and minimize how much he interacted with it. Not being able to reach out at any time and sense the thousands of Jedi all over the galaxy had been excruciating. Not being able to reach out at any point and sense Anakin had been worse. 

At least then, they’d all been alive. 

At least then, in the end, he’d come home. 

There was no home at the end of this mission. There were no Jedi to reach out to in the Force. And Anakin… no. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to remember the flames. 

The Force worked in mysterious ways, and visions were notoriously difficult to comprehend. Surely what he’d seen about Anakin and the Republic and the Jedi and Palpatine hadn’t been literal. A vision, that’s all. Probably symbolic. A warning not to be too attached. Reminding him not to lose perspective with Anakin the same way he had with Satine. 

He was on assignment to protect Anakin’s child—it still stung that he and Padme had never actually told him about the marriage, or the pregnancy, but surely Anakin had his reasons—and once they could be sure the boy was safe, Yoda would contact him again. 

The commlink was safely stored where no scavengers could happen upon it, and Obi-Wan had checked it once per rotation, waiting for the call to come back. The last line of communication he had with anyone. What would happen if the sand clogged up the circuits? Anakin had been right to hate sand. Obi-Wan hadn’t really appreciated that before. 

Thoughts of Anakin again, burning in his mind, burning up everything, burning up the both of them. Closing his eyes was never enough, but he always tried it even so. 

Not a memory. Not a memory. A Force vision, that’s all. 

Obi-Wan held his head in his hands and pressed against his skull, grunting, hoping to pry the memories out of his mind, and still only meeting the singed feeling of Mustafar’s surface burning through his skin. 

The burning subsided after some time, Obi-Wan crouched in the dirt, hands against his temples, panting. Subsided, but would come again. 

He could be spared for a few hours, he decided. His scans over the last week proved no one was actively prowling in the area, and the chances of Yoda needing him so immediately were slim. 

For the first time, Obi-Wan made the trek into Mos Eisley. It was as dirty as the Mos Espa he remembered from his time there with Qui-Gon, though somehow managed to be seedier. 

No matter. He really only had one goal here, anyway. 

It didn’t take long to locate the nearest cantina. 

It was a place creatively labeled “Cantina,” but called itself “Chalmun’s Spaceport Cantina” in smaller print on the door. Dusk was just beginning to settle over the city as Obi-Wan ducked inside. 

The music inside was rousing, and the air thick and tangy. As a human, Obi-Wan was definitely a minority, but there were enough around that he still wouldn’t stick out. In his peripheral, a few Weequay hunched over drinks. Obi-Wan’s breath caught in his throat as he glanced over, then let it out when he didn’t recognize any faces. 

That was the problem with blending in at a spaceport like this, he decided. He’d met too many criminals as a Jedi. For now, though, he seemed to be safe, if that’s something a person could be in a place like this. 

He sat down at the bar and ordered a drink—didn’t really care which one, only make it something strong. 

“Don’t think I’ve seen you around before,” the barkeep said. 

“You haven’t,” Obi-Wan answered, taking the drink and tossing a few trugut across the table. He tipped the glass back, gulped the sludgy liquid down, and slid it, empty, back across the table. “A few more of those will do.”

The barkeep gave one more appraising look before refilling the glass, but he didn’t say anything else. 

Obi-Wan tried not to taste the liquor as he drank it, partly because it smelled like gasoline, and partly because even the taste of alcohol only served to remind him of Anakin. Everything reminded him of Anakin. Everything he’d done for the last fourteen years, he’d done with Anakin by his side, and everything he hadn’t, he’d told Anakin about. That, or Anakin found out some other way. How did he always manage to do that, anyway?

By the time he laid his head in his arms on the table and stopped taking shots, the memories didn’t sting as much. They were too hazy to. Everything was too hazy, and a little more distant. 

He didn’t mean to fall asleep like that, but he did. He wasn’t even sure for how long; when he woke, it was to some mercenary blasting some other mercenary, and the two of them being thrown out. No one paid any attention to the beige-and-brown heap in the corner, which, again, was really just as well. 

He spent far too much on a mid-sized bottle of something, tucked it away in his cloak, and left. 

Obi-Wan—Ben, now, he supposed—stumbled out of the cantina into the cold, dangerous dark of Mos Eisley’s night. He would have worried more about attracting unwelcome attention were he not painfully aware that he looked as destitute as he was in reality. As it was, no one spared him a second glance; only a week and blending in already. 

He made it back to the hut, somehow—Force knows he wouldn’t remember how in the morning. He would, however, remember what he did after arriving. 

The commlink was still safely tucked away in the box with Anakin’s lightsaber. Taking it out and checking it again was so instinctual that Obi-Wan barely noticed himself doing it. No messages waited for him, of course. They wouldn’t. They never would. 

He held the commlink between his fingers, playing with the balance, letting it tilt from side to side on his hand. The only contact he had left with the Republic, with the Temple. With anyone, really. Without it, if anything changed, if anyone needed him, if Yoda contacted him again and said it was safe now to come out of hiding, Obi-Wan would have no way of ever knowing. 

Not that it mattered. The mission wouldn’t end. He wasn’t undercover. He wasn’t Obi-Wan at all; not anymore. Just Ben. Just Ben Kenobi, a backwater hermit who wouldn’t have ever even heard of the glistening Temple on the dazzling Core system, much less have ever been, much less have ever lived there. 

Yoda would never contact him. The Republic would never need him. The Temple would never call him home—his own voice warned all of them away. 

He would never need the commlink, and having it only provided a signal that someone else could use to trace a path to Luke. Holding onto it was not only dangerous, but an attachment, as well. Unseemly. The Jedi may have ceased to exist, but that was no excuse for being such a poor one. 

With a last and all but unnoticeable stroke against the commlink’s smooth edge, Obi-Wan snapped the device in two, threw it on the ground, and stomped on it for good measure. The pieces pressed into the dirt of the hut, and Obi-Wan buried them just beneath the surface with the toe of his boot. 

There was no leaving this place. There was no one left to contact, or to be contacted by. Obi-Wan was alone, and would always be, and there was no use in thinking anything different. 

Ben Kenobi took another shot, spit it and everything else in his stomach back out minutes later, and passed into unconsciousness shivering, without bothering to find the blankets.


	2. Talk in Circles (step two: anger)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I talk in circles,  
>  I talk in circles,  
> I watch for signals,  
> For a clue.  
> -Sleeping At Last, “Mercury”_

As days turned into weeks, Obi-Wan’s restlessness only grew. There was only so much scouting he could do, and he’d done it all, repeatedly. Owen had been abundantly clear about the acceptable level of involvement, or lack thereof, with the Lars family. Trips into town were rationed, as each one increased the chances of running into someone who could recognize him. 

His chest had been oddly tight of late. 

He kept meditating, for as long as he could bear—the Force felt so different without the hum of other signatures as a constant reminder of life in the galaxy, now that he really was alone. He took comfort in the Force all the same, of course, but not in the way he was used to. So he meditated, and pretended not to notice how the sessions grew shorter with every passing day. 

The ache at the back of his neck and the tension headaches at his temples were so familiar that they were almost comfortable. The tight chest, though, and the new pressure right in the center of his forehead, and the restlessness, the near-jitter… these things were new. Thankfully, all subsided with a high enough dose of alcohol, but Obi-Wan still couldn’t fully deny their presence. 

It was one day, when he was making sort of eclectic soup he’d devised with what ingredients he could get, one morning a few weeks into exile, that all these tensions swelled, and as Obi-Wan tried to release it all into the Force, he found his frustration only grew stronger. 

Anakin really could have said something sooner, if he was having that much trouble. 

Sure, he was clearly under immense stress, in the days leading up to the end of the Republic. He knew that. Everyone did. Obi-Wan himself had told them. Ahsoka. Padme. The whole Council knew, too. They’d all already known, and they were all there, and all worried, and any of them would have helped him, so why didn’t Anakin just come to someone? To him? 

“Didn’t you think? At all?” he said out loud. The words came out more harshly than he’d intended them. Or at least, more harshly than he wished he’d intended them. Mentally, he pictured Anakin across the counter in front of him, not the way Obi-Wan had left him, but the way he had been just before Utupau. Haggard, yes, and exhausted, and stressed, but, well… Anakin, in a way he hadn’t been after that moment. 

And now that the words were out, more filled Obi-Wan’s mind like the breaking of a dam. He put down the spoon and placed his palms on the counter, leaning slightly forward, glaring at air, seeing Anakin. “Didn’t you realize I could have helped you?”

No response, of course. Of course; after all, Obi-Wan was alone. The lack of an answer, though, frustrated him still more. Anakin wasn’t there, so maybe it wasn’t fair to blame him for not answering. Even so, he _should have been_ , damn it. They were a pair, always. It was Anakin choosing to shut him out that had caused all this. “You always did say I was holding you back. Perhaps I wasn’t holding you back enough.” 

“And you,” Obi-Wan spewed, turning on his heel to an imagined Togruta, “Why did you walk away, seeing him, knowing how much he wanted you to stay? When I asked you to talk to him, why didn’t you get to him in time?” In his mind’s eye, Ahsoka had nothing to say, and before giving her a chance to come up with some quip, he turned to a different spot of empty air. 

Her hair was held back with silver bands, and her dark velvet gown exposed her secret. He’d always known something had happened between the two of them while they’d been on Naboo, and in the end, he’d come very near the truth, but never that far. “You were his wife. How could you have let all this happen?” Padme hadn’t held his gaze the first time, either, when he’d asked if Anakin was the father. 

In the back of Obi-Wan’s throat, a soft growl rumbled. _The Council is not always right_ , he’d told Ahsoka, the last time they ever spoke—the closest he ever came to an apology for what had happened. He’d tried to save her, to make them see, and had they listened? Of course not. If she’d still been with Anakin, none of this could have happened. 

Obi-Wan shut his eyes and remembered the Council chambers. A gathering of individuals he trusted so much, and then who had… 

“We were supposed to be the wisest of us,” Obi-Wan said alone on Tatooine, just a few weeks too late. Count Dooku had told them about Palpatine from the beginning, and they never put the pieces together. “How could we have been so blind?”

Count Dooku had told _him_ about Palpatine from the beginning, and _he_ never put the pieces together. No, in fact, instead of that, had given Palpatine unfettered access to his young, lost, confused padawan, and then been baffled when Anakin thought of Palpatine as a mentor. 

His hands rose to his eyes, and his palms pressed against tightly-shut lids. “How could I have been so blind?”

Sure, he’d told people to be worried about Anakin, but by then it had been far too late, and he’d never said enough. When the words came out, they were barely enunciated at all; more just whispered grunts, really. “Why didn’t I tell Ahsoka sooner? Tell Padme sooner? Tell Rex sooner? Tell Anakin sooner?”

The last time he’d seen Anakin, the real Anakin, he’d tried to say… something. He thought he’d gotten the message across, even. Looking back, he realized how little it had really been. He should have seen this coming and stopped it so much sooner. 

_Don’t form attachments_ , the Jedi Code said. If he’d let himself be more attached to Anakin, none of this could have ever happened. 

A prick, not to his skin, but beneath the surface, in the Force, at the back of his head, where skull met spine. A prick, and a thought, a whisper. _What if you could change it all? Bring the Force back into balance, make it all the way it was?_

He had been so close, on Mustafar, to stopping all of this in its tracks, but he hadn’t been strong enough to make it through. Just a little more, and none of this could have happened, and it all could have been so different. Just a little more. Not that he wanted power, of course, but to save everyone? Protect everyone? Right the wrongs his failure had allowed? 

The air went still. He was cold, which really shouldn’t happen during the day on Tatooine. 

For the first time during his tirade, Obi-Wan actually got back an answer. It came not in the form of Anakin’s voice, or Yoda’s, or even Dooku’s, but, strangely enough, in Ventress’s. “It was you they were holding back, not him,” her voice crooned. “Did you never wonder why they sent you on all the most dangerous missions, but gave you the smallest voice in their politics? They never wanted you to have the Chosen One as your apprentice in the first place.”

The cold in the room melted into red hot anger. Obi-Wan found himself shaking. 

Ventress continued. “The decisions of other people, who never looked out for you, cost you everything. Mourn their loss, if you must. Miss them. Why not? But did you never think that maybe, this _is_ what the Force wills? For you to finally be free? The power is yours, my dear Obi-Wan, and with it, you could do what no Jedi and no Sith ever have. Perhaps, even, turn back time itself.”

This all started with a tight feeling in Obi-Wan’s chest, and the feeling certainly hadn’t gone away. Every muscle convulsed, and Obi-Wan fell on his knees in the dirt, panting, snarling, growling. 

Ventress was neither Jedi nor Sith. Instead, she’d forged her own path, even worked alongside Jedi in the end. She was proof that it was possible to wield great power without joining the ranks of the Sith. A middle ground, of sorts. No wonder the Force had sent her. 

He’d thought Cody was his friend. That Anakin was his brother. Maybe he’d tried not to form too much of an attachment, but that had never really been his strong suit, and anyway, he’d definitely formed trust, at the very least. Following the Code had already cost him everything, and he’d never join the Sith, but a middle ground, just a few shades closer to the dark, just enough to tap into its power? After all, Master Windu had done it. 

The rage inside boiled, demanding a release. 

He couldn’t breathe, and the ground beneath him seemed to quake. His palms pressed against the dirt, and fissures cracked open in the dirt from underneath them. Dust and pebbles fell at points in the ceiling. 

He’d said he’d never betray the Code. 

But to fix everything?

And besides, what had following the Code ever done for him?

Ahsoka had left the Order, and she’d turned out okay, before-

Before. 

Anakin on his own hadn’t done this, and wasn’t to blame. Not just him, or Ahsoka, or Padme, or Cody, or Yoda, or the Council, or Dooku, or Maul, or Palpatine, or Obi-Wan himself. All of them had parts to play. None of them were, wholly, to blame. Not even the Sith were wholly to blame. 

The Dark Side, though? 

The Dark Side was wholly to blame. 

And there Obi-Wan was, listening to it, and letting it in. 

“No,” he breathed, using what little air he could actually get in his lungs. 

The voice that answered was no longer Ventress’s, but the Son’s. “Disappointing. We could be great together.”

“No,” Obi-Wan repeated. 

“I’ve always had a bit of trouble understanding one part of the Jedi Code, and since you’re so well versed, perhaps you could enlighten me,” the Son said to him. “The Code commands its followers not to form attachments, yet encourages an attachment to the Code itself. It’s the Jedi way to sacrifice one’s self to save others, isn’t it? Deny attachment to the Code, and gain the power to save everyone. Isn’t that what a Jedi would do?”

“The Dark Side is never the answer,” Obi-Wan ground out. 

“Never? What strong language. And you’re quite certain there’s nothing I can say to persuade you?”

The word was barely audible, but rooted to Obi-Wan’s core. “Nothing.”

“Very well, then. I’ll have to try another method.” The voice ceased as suddenly as it began, and in its place, the feeling of a cracking skull. 

The pain splintered any thoughts before Obi-Wan could form them. The walls of the hut shook, and a dust cloud formed as cracks opened wider. The pain grew, until Obi-Wan saw nothing but a pure white light. 

When he woke up what he assumed wasn’t long after, given the dust cloud still enshrouding him, Obi-Wan sat back into a meditative stance. The pain was gone. He felt lighter, but in a way that left him feeling more anxious than peaceful, like something important, vital even, was missing. The nearest feeling might be losing a lightsaber, but that discomfort paled in comparison to this dread. 

He sank into meditation, or tried to, and soon discovered why. 

The Force had left him. 

Could it do that?

In any case, he couldn’t feel it. 

Would it do that?

Regardless, it was gone. 

And why wouldn’t it? Obi-Wan was a failure in every other respect, so why not this one too? Why wouldn’t the Force revoke its connection to him, so long as everyone else was?

He’d thought before that he was alone. He hadn’t known what the word meant. 

Now, though?

Now, for the first time, Obi-Wan was truly, completely alone, and, in a last betrayal of his own values and of the Force, Obi-Wan was afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to this fic's namesake, "Mercury," both "Anger" and "Fear," also by Sleeping At Last, really influenced this chapter.


	3. Bending Truth (step three: bargaining)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _How to feel different.  
>  How to feel new.  
> Like science fiction  
> Bending truth.  
> -Sleeping At Last, “Mercury”_

As weeks turned into months, the Force continued its cold silence. Obi-Wan kept trying to reach it, using methods that had never failed him, that he relied on ever since he was a youngling. Nothing. It was like one of those artificial suppressors he’d heard they used in the citadel, only this was in no way artificial. Everyone else had left him, and so here, at the end of it all, the Force had, too. 

Obi-Wan couldn’t wrap his mind around that. It couldn’t be. None of it. 

What had happened on Mustafar? At the Temple? On Utupau? It was all so strange. 

The 212th had turned on him. _Cody_ turned on him. Obi-Wan summoned up the icy anger he’d so carefully encased his memories of the clones in, and found even that comfort dripping away. The anger couldn’t last. Not forever. Not even now that Obi-Wan had to hold onto the anger himself, and couldn’t just push it all into the Force. Even held anger faded eventually when not catalyzed by the Dark Side. 

Instead of simply letting himself be lost in that strange combination of agony and hate that he harbored in his memories, he posed a question to his traitorous men, or, more specifically, to his traitorous second in command, and friend. _Why?_ This was what Obi-Wan still didn’t understand. If the clones had all been planning this betrayal in the months, weeks, days, even mere minutes before its execution, he hadn’t sensed any disturbance in any of them. 

Yes, the events had been triggered by Order 66, given to all clones by the then-Chancellor, but his men had been, well, his. Had been for years. Oddball. Boil. Cody. Not just soldiers, not puppets of the now-Emperor, but men, and his men, at that. And they’d betrayed him at the behest of a man most of them had never even met without so much as a regretful thought that Obi-Wan might have picked up on. 

Something happened in that transmission that changed things so entirely for the clones that killing Jedi was as natural as fighting droids. 

There was a trick Obi-Wan himself could use to produce such an effect—the fabled Jedi Mind Trick. But for a person to perform one on that massive of a scale, from anywhere, at any corner of the galaxy, all at once… unheard of. Impossible. For a Jedi. 

For a Sith?

The Sith weren’t supposed to be that powerful. They were supposed to think they were, but really be a false front, an empty shell, lost in their anger and their hatred, consumed in themselves. Like Maul. Like Dooku. Like Palpatine was supposed to be, but, perhaps, wasn’t. 

A mind trick so powerful it turned every clone across the galaxy into a genocidal force against the Jedi in the blink of an eye. If it were true, there could be no defeating such a being. It was true that Master Yoda had failed, and he was the best the Jedi had to offer. It made sense, after a fashion. 

And it allowed him to remember Cody as he was Before, and discount whatever came After. The anger melted into compassion for them all, manipulated into betraying the individuality they all had cared so much for. Compassion for millions of men who had slaughtered thousands of his own kind did not come without the price of still more anguish. Without the Force to bear the weight of the feelings, they overwhelmed Obi-Wan, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. 

During the war, Obi-Wan had thought the pain in the Force of a galaxy torn by violence was the worst thing he would ever have to bear. He’d lost sleep over it. He’d nearly been consumed by it. It was a shadow of what he felt now, in the total absence of the Force, remembering name after name after name of clones and Jedi alike, all dead, all killed because of each other, all on the same side, all innocent. All victims of Darth Sidious. 

He maintained a meditative stance, but couldn’t stop the too-familiar cinching of his throat or the convulsion of every muscle in his body, screaming, fighting against the idea that there was nothing he could do for any of them. _Run. Fight. Act,_ his body urged him. There was nowhere to run to, nothing to fight, and no action to take that could reverse what already was. 

There was no Force to send these feelings into, and so Obi-Wan held them all passively in his mind and body, still. As the horror dulled enough to see past again, he breathed. Even without the Force, he could clear his mind. In a painstaking process, he relaxed his body, and allowed his mind to house the feelings separately from his self, leaving his mind free of distractions. 

The ruse could only work if he gave his mind something else to think about, or at the least, be lost in. Obi-Wan rose from his position on the ground and went to wash out what few clothes and bedding he owned. Water was a commodity on Tatooine, but he set up enough of a moisture collecting system to usually serve his purposes. 

Occasionally, he found he couldn’t collect quite enough (as it happened, Tatooine actually did have something of a dry season, and those months were particularly miserable), and he took the opportunity to buy from the Lars homestead. He never lingered, and never actually saw Luke the few times he’d gone thus far, but if that was the closest he could ever come to all that was left of Anakin, he’d take it. 

Unfortunately, his moisture collectors had been enough for the last few weeks, so no purchases were necessary. Obi-Wan carefully poured out the water he could afford for laundry, and swiftly set to work, letting the cool motion smooth away the tangled mess of his past. 

When that chore was done, Obi-Wan found another to busy himself with, then another. There was simply no time to worry about the notably-absent Force, or what had happened to any of his friends from before everything had ended. 

Days drew out that way. When chores ran out, Obi-Wan waited until dusk, when the twin suns fell below the horizon and the heat wasn’t so unbearable, and paced the perimeter of the area he’d chosen to protect. That, too, was mindless. Endless tracks of sand, and nary a threat in sight. Still, it was something he could _do_ , and that was enough of a distraction that Obi-Wan gratefully welcomed it. 

He’d by lying if he didn’t admit that the alcohol was helping keep memories at bay too, alongside the mindless work. He tried to keep nights at the cantina to a minimum, out of a fear of being recognized, and he wasn’t making enough credits to afford much, anyway. 

Eventually, of course, the memories came knocking anyway. The thoughts crept in through cracks in numbed mental walls. Sometimes these came in the form of lists of names. _Ahsoka. Rex. Aayla. Plo. Jesse,_ and on until Obi-Wan found something mindless enough to quiet them again. 

Folding the laundry was his favorite part, because it was one of the only things left that hadn’t changed at all. No matter the state of the galaxy, one could always depend on having laundry to fold, he mused. Not that it generally took that long; he didn’t own much. 

Sometimes, of course, he’d set the stack quite neatly on the thin mattress, and by some happenstance, he’d be clumsy enough to knock it all over and be forced to start again. Quite unfortunate. Couldn’t be helped. Nothing for it but to fold it all again. These incidents tended to coincide with running out of other things to do, so it was never much of a bother. 

Even with all these attempts, one thought formed, continually pushed down, ever-stubbornly pulling itself back up. 

Sidious may have used a mind trick on the clones, but such a thing could never have worked on Anakin. 

He wanted to ignore that fact, and had, for weeks. It kept returning, each time with more clarity. _What had happened to Anakin?_ was the question he wished above all else to never consider, and, possibly because of that very fact, it was the one question he could never fully escape. 

It had been quite some time since Mustafar, and even then, things had all moved so quickly. Memory, Obi-Wan reminded himself, was historically inaccurate. This was why younglings spent so long learning forms. Repetition was much more reliable than memory. Yet, as he could not—and, certainly, had no wish to—relive the memory, and could not repeat the motions in exactly the way he had that day, simple, inaccurate memory was all he had to go on. 

He didn’t want to remember any of it, really, not even in the imperfect way he was able to. However, regardless of the days and weeks spent tirelessly avoiding this very subject, his mind would not be dissuaded. Fine, then. 

Anakin had to have had a reason. He would never have turned to the Dark Side willingly. He couldn’t have been mind tricked, either; he was far, far too powerful for that. But then again… _Mortis._ The Son had been able to do something of that kind. The Son also shouldn’t have been able to reach Anakin on Coruscant. 

Hadn’t the Son just reached Obi-Wan himself on Tatooine, not that many weeks ago? 

No, no, the Dark Side had done that, had taken on a voice it thought would be persuasive. It wasn’t actually the being he’d met on Mortis. Anakin himself had made sure of that. 

It made no sense. On Mustafar… Anakin had harmed Padme, too. He’d harmed her, and then left Obi-Wan to check her vitals, as if he hadn’t cared about the senator at all, and of course that couldn’t be right either. 

Instinctively, as his chest tightened at the memory and the smoke of Mustafar began to fill his lungs, he reached into the cupboard for the ale. One long draught. One long breath. One more draught. Two more breaths, then another. Obi-Wan put the bottle away, and thought that was quite enough thinking of Anakin for the day. After all, there was work to be done. 

The trouble with being alone was that at some point, busyness came to nothing. Chores end. Alcohol runs out. Sleep never came easily to begin with. In the absence of a Force connection, Obi-Wan had given up meditation entirely. Use of the holonet would be a danger to Luke and to himself. Old-fashioned books were hard enough to come by in the Core, and here, of course, they were unheard of. He practiced forms sometimes, but that did little good when it came to avoiding thoughts of Anakin. 

The being he’d fought on Mustafar had certainly _looked_ like Anakin, but what was that the masters had said, years ago? “Your eyes can deceive you; don’t trust them.” That couldn’t possibly have been Anakin. Couldn’t be. That wasn’t Anakin. In a way, hadn’t he always known that? Anakin’s Force signature had always been gold. The being he’d fought on Mustafar had radiated a bleeding crimson. 

He’d seen the security tapes in the Temple, too. Palpatine hadn’t told Anakin to rise. He’d never even used Anakin’s name. What he’d said was, “Rise, Darth Vader.” Now, it was true that the Sith were given new names upon joining that order, but, well. There was no absolute means of proving that Darth Vader _was_ Anakin. 

He’d fought Darth Vader on Mustafar, not Anakin. All the same, the question remained: What had happened to Anakin? 

The suns sank below the mountains, and the cold swept through over the course of the next few hours. Obi-Wan drifted to sleep, alternating between that question and increasingly-harsh orders not to think about it. When he dreamt, which wasn’t often, it was about the same. Reenactments of Mustafar, always with some details shifted from the way Obi-Wan thought they’d been the last time. Each time, he woke up, and tried to list off the changes, and what the truth had been. 

The truth got harder and harder to remember with each attempt, but always, some things remained. The smoke and ash that had choked Obi-Wan ever since, and a face that should have been Anakin’s, were it not for the distinctly yellowed eyes in place of vibrant blue. 

_What had Darth Vader done to Anakin?_ That was the question. The two could not have been less alike. Anakin cared too deeply, and Vader didn’t care at all. Nothing could have stripped Anakin of his ability to care so fiercely. It was one of his best qualities, even if, at times, a vice. Obi-Wan smiled, remembering not Mustafar, but the dozens and dozens of times that Anakin’s refusal to give up on people had given him victory where anyone else would have met with defeat. 

He’d taken Anakin on as a padawan because Qui-Gon wanted him to, and Qui-Gon had wanted him to because he believed Anakin was the Chosen One. With Anakin dead and the Empire reigning, Obi-Wan had to admit that his master must have been wrong—after a fashion. The Skywalker line hadn’t ended with Anakin, and the sole hope of the galaxy now rested in a moisture farm mere kilometers away. 

For so long, he believed his duty was to train the Chosen One. Now, he came to realize, it was actually to protect him. He’d been one generation early. 

The galaxy still had some chance, then, but Anakin did not. He should have been the one person Anakin trusted above all others, and he’d failed, and he hadn’t been there when Anakin needed him. He’d been on Utupau when Darth Vader betrayed and consumed Anakin under the direction of Palpatine. 

He colored a little, thinking of his earlier outbursts toward memories of Ahsoka and Padme and the others. Perhaps their actions could have influenced the result, but none of them should have been in those positions anyway. Padme should never have been as involved as she already was, and Ahsoka not only left the Order, but was Anakin’s padawan, not Anakin’s master. The blame fell squarely on Obi-Wan, really. Palpatine and Vader killed Anakin, and Obi-Wan was the one whose neglect had let them. 

A weight shifted in Obi-Wan. It wasn’t removed—no, there was no relief. He caused the end to the galaxy as he’d known it, and because of that, everyone was dead. At least now, though, he could put the questions aside. He didn’t need to fear what had happened to Anakin, because Anakin was dead, along with all the rest of the Jedi and so many of the clones. Anakin had escaped the aftermath and was one with the Force. 

It was Obi-Wan who was left behind with the memories.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In addition to this fic's namesake, "Mercury," Sleeping At Last's song "Mind" was the one to most influence this chapter. I recommend listening to it. 
> 
> Here's an anecdote I still think is funny. I wrote most of this all in one long day, and that night, by chance, my family decided to watch A New Hope. I was so wrapped up in the gaslighting process I used here that I actually made a joke that referenced Anakin being dead, and I forgot he wasn't until full seconds after. Is that considered method writing?


End file.
